NO CLEAN SINGING

OUR LIST OF 2024’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 20): SINISTRO, MAN’S GIN, DEVIN TOWNSEND, YOVEL

Jan 292025

(written by Islander)

When I picked the name for this blog in 2009 it was partly a joke and partly dead serious. A joke, because I made clear from the outset that some of my favorite metal bands included singing in their music; serious, because at the time I was annoyed by a budding trend among metalcore bands I liked to substitute fairly lame singing for yelling and snarling.

In the ensuing years we’ve written about many bands who have included singers, but it’s fair to say that they’ve been in a minority. Speaking only for myself, I still generally prefer extreme vocals in metal, and it still takes a special singing voice to overcome the prejudice.

In the case of all four songs that I’ve bundled together today, I thought the exception was well-earned, although I’m not sure you would agree that “singing” is the correct way to describe the vocals in the fourth song. Of course, I think all four songs are infectious too. (If you’re new to this series, you can find all the other songs on the list via this link.) Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SCARE — “CROWNED IN YELLOW”

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Jan 292025

(written by Islander)

The Québec City-based quartet who named themselves Scare pose a question in the title of their new album that seems quite relevant at an anxious time when humankind seems bent on devouring itself and the world through selfishness, greed, delusional paranoia, ignorance, and hatred: In The End, Was It Worth It?

It follows their debut LP from 2019, Not Dead Yet, Probably…, another title that also seems quite fitting for where we found ourselves then, and now, and their 2021 EP Congratulations On Your Death.

The band’s music has become increasingly interesting over time. It has a backbone of lead-weighted metallic hardcore, with the kind of sludgy punch that loosens teeth and vocals that can cause intracranial bleeding, but they’ve also revealed a talent for creating gripping, mood-changing, and even atmospheric melodies that get under the skin and stay there.

You’ll understand this for yourselves when you hear “Crowned In Yellow,” the immediately addictive song we’re premiering today, a song that’s at once supernatural, physically compulsive, and rabidly deranged — and yet also sounds like an anthem. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ETHEREAL DARKNESS — “ON THE EDGE OF THE CLIFF”

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Jan 292025

(written by Islander)

Almost six years have passed since the Belgian band Ethereal Darkness released their debut album, Smoke and Shadows. Through a rendering of atmospheric melodic death metal with black and doom metal influences, it presented a great combination of heavy, head-moving power, sublime melancholy moods, wide-screen sweep, and heart-rupturing emotional explosiveness.

Smoke and Shadows was the solo effort of Lars, but in the years since then he has found four other talented musicians to join him, and they have completed a second, hour-long, album entitled Echoes. While they continue searching for a label to handle its release, Ethereal Darkness have decided to release a single from the album named “On the Edge of the Cliff,” and as you can see, we’re hosting its premiere today.

But before we get to that song, however, we should first talk about another album track (its first single) released last November along with a beautifully evocative lyric video: “The Cycle“. Continue reading »

WARDRUNA: “BIRNA”

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Jan 292025

(Our Norway-based contributor Chile prepared the following extensive discussion of Wardruna‘s just-released new album Birna.)

Bears have been a constant presence in our minds, stories, and myths from the times undreamed of. It was those first encounters between our ancestors and the majestic dwellers of the forest that shaped our very understanding of nature. For the bears, so perfectly aligned with the changes of the seasons, were like a beacon that shone its light on our wandering hearts and thus setting us on a path of revelation, a path from which we have strayed away in our complacency. Time has come again to take the road less traveled and return to the shade of the trees and the rustling of the leaves.

If there is one band in existence today that we would call upon to take us back into nature’s realm, there is no other better candidate than Wardruna. This Norwegian force of (and for) nature needs no particular introduction, as they have forged their own blazing trail from the noctilucent North into the hearts of the world. Their Runaljod trilogy is a towering achievement in modern music and serves both as an inspiration to many and as a reminder that we belong to the Earth and not the other way around.

Released on January 24th by Sony Music and By Norse Music, the sixth studio album by the band is called Birna and sees their mastermind Einar Selvik reaching for inspiration deep into the dens and the burrows of the earth where the hibernating bears dream on their moss-covered beds. The concept behind the album is best described by the band itself: Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2024’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 19): SPIDER GOD, SUMMONING SATURN VOIDS, THE BLEAK PICTURE

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Jan 282025

(written by Islander)

Welcome to Part 19 of this nearly-finished infectious song list. Although I’ve had some “organizing principles” for the most recent installments, I can’t say I had one for the grouping of today’s three songs, apart from the fact that all three of these got stuck in my head the first time I heard them and they have remain rooted there ever since.

To check out the 53 songs preceding these 3 on the list, use this link. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CARTILAGE — “FROTHED VOMIT SLOSH”

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Jan 282025

(written by Islander)

If you see people like these, your first impulse (a sensible one) would be to run first, ask questions later. And you absolutely should run, as fast as you can, but toward their music, not away from it.

Take it from me, a first-hand observer of the unhinged Cartilage performance in Seattle at the 2022 edition of Northwest Terror Fest, their live shows are about as much hell-raising fun as you could want. Their recorded music is kickass too. When we premiered their second album The Deader the Better (also in 2022), I spewed a lot of words, including these:

Cartilage discharge songs that slash like serial killers, convulse in seizures, sear like an acetylene torch, maul like bulldozers, and lurch like zombies (the slow ones, not the fast ones), and as crazed and kaleidoscopic as the songs usually are, they’re cleverly embedded with hook-y melodies and head-moving grooves.

On top of all that, Cartilage manage to make the tracks feel feral even though it quickly becomes evident that all the instrumentalists have got lots of top-shelf technical chops (enough to make prog and tech-death bands jealous) and a sense of twisted adventurousness in the way they write songs.

But don’t take my word for it. Take the word of the dependably tasteful Everlasting Spew Records, who signed Cartilage for the release of their new EP, Tales From The Entrails: A Necrology. Here’s how the label introduces this new feast of frenzy: Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: OBSCURE SPHINX / SLAUGHTERSUN / ΘΛΊΨΙΣ

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Jan 282025

(Andy Synn promises to review more EPs this year… we’ll see about that!)

Every year I promise that I’m going to feature and review more EPs here at NCS… and every year I fail spectacularly at this, and have to jam in all the short-form releases of the year into my annual “List Week” instead.

But, mark my words, this year things are going to be different! Although, I might have said that before…

OUR LIST OF 2024’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 18): THY CATAFALQUE, HAIL SPIRIT NOIR, SEAR BLISS

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Jan 272025

(written by Islander)

If you were with us when I started rolling out this list 26 days ago, then you know I’m going to call a halt to it on January 31st. That makes this the last week, with five installments left to go — though there are rumors that Andy Synn and DGR may prepare addendums that include favorites of theirs which I didn’t get to.

This week will be a disappointment to me and to many of you, not because the songs will be disappointments but because my self-imposed deadline will force me to leave out a lot of songs that deserve this kind of recognition.

Today’s group of three leans into black metal (among many other things), though the songs differ significantly from each other — and they are all out of the ordinary. To see the other songs on the list so far, this link will take you to all of them. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): PRAETORIAN — “PYLON CULT”

Album Reviews, Premieres 1 Response »

Jan 272025

(written by Islander)

At the end of this month APF Records will release Pylon Cult, the debut album by Praetorian from Hertfordshire in the UK. The label describes the album this way:

A new lesson in vile, disgusting and gruesome blackened sludge metal, mixed in a volatile cocktail of death metal, thrash and hardcore. Praetorian are here to take you on a wild ride with an album that fluctuates between hi-octane energy, colossal doomy riffs, a savage dual-vocal attack and insane tempo changes, all culminating in a violent, nightmarish thrill ride.

That provides a faithful description of the brutalizing but mind-bending sonic nihilism provided by Pylon Cult — a title that comes from contemporary British author David Southwell’s imagined county Hookland, in which a so-called cult begin to worship pylons in order to harness their energy.

But we have our own thoughts to share about this ruthless but consistently fascinating album — in addition to the main attraction, which is our premiere of a full album stream today. Continue reading »

GONZO’S HEAVY ROUNDUP, JANUARY 2025

Album Reviews 1 Response »

Jan 272025

(Denver-based NCS writer Gonzo helps us kick off the New Year with reviews and recommendations of four albums released this month.)

Beyond being miserably cold and generally lacking in the “stuff to do” department, January is customarily the month of pure crap. Big-screen movie releases are usually garbage. Music releases tend to be few and far between, and bands tend to (wisely) avoid touring due to the weather. Nobody wants a broken-down trailer in rural Nebraska at 4 a.m. in subzero temperatures with all your gear stuck in it.

So given all that, I was fully prepared to scrape from the bottom of the barrel for this month’s column. Evidently, this January is built differently.

Not only do I already have almost 60 songs on my best-of-year Spotify playlist, but I had to narrow this column down to just a few bands I wanted to include. Separate reviews of other unexpectedly awesome shit may follow – granted, if my fellow NCS scribes don’t beat me to it. (Which is likely.)

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